Parallel Panic
by AgentOfAngst
Summary: Octavian and his father go through similar struggles.


**I developed an interest in the family I concocted for Octavian after writing Blood in The Sand, so I wanted to write something that goes into his dad's past, shows the parallel between Octavian and his father, and also highlights the Octavian and Luke are cousins theory. I wrote this awhile back and left it in my notebook until now. Enjoy!**

Steven Castellan was having a panic attack in 1979 and no one knew what to do about it, or how to diagnose it. So no one did anything. It wasn't like they were ever going to do anything. People flipped out in this house all the time. At this point in his life Steven didn't expect anyone to do anything about his panic attack, so he just hid. If you went through it, carefully, thoughtfully, you could draw the line back to exactly why he was panicking. It was because his dad was getting angry and his mom was crying and his sister May seemed to occupy her own little world obliviously and his mom and sister were making his dad angrier and his dad was making his mom cry harder. And he just wanted everyone to be calm and happy but if he said anything now his dad would probably whip him. So he hid in the bathtub until he passed out, waking up only later to banging on the bathroom door. He still ended up getting whipped.

He had many days like that. When calm and happy wouldn't come so panic did instead. For a while he let it. For a while, all he did was write about it. The breathlessness, the pain, the loss of control and the need to disappear all translated into poems only two people outside of himself ever saw, but he never got rid of them. For awhile, that was all he could do. Then Steven Castellan died.

Or else, it seemed like he did. He was in high school, nearly a graduate. Tall enough to not get whipped any more, strong enough to scream back at his father, but too apathetic to care. Mostly he just let things be done to him. But that was just his outer layer, zombie-ish and dead. Inwardly he plotted and schemed. Inwardly he was full of blame. He blamed all of his problems on happiness and perfection. If everyone had just been happy, if everything had just been perfect he wouldn't have always gotten hurt. If everyone had just been happy he would have been fine. So when he dared entertain the thought of lashing out it was not at the people who had hurt him, but at the people who had the nerve to be unhappy. Especially the people he cared about (though they were few and far between), like his mom and sister. Those were the people he blamed the most, and the people it most hurt to see unhappy. When his father died his mother's tears and his sister's ignorance became synonymous with the pain that had been inflicted. So he cast them off and went to college, trying hard not to care about people so the pain and the panic would stay out of his life.

He failed in that endeavor, falling for someone who sought perfection and happiness as much as he did. The only other person who saw his poetry, other than his sister. The only one who encouraged him to keep writing rather than ending it all. Within three years he and Victoria, his other half, were married.

The panic and pain never left though. On nights when she'd get upset so would he. To keep from hurting her, for he never wanted to hurt her, he would take it out on himself or the servants, or with a pen on paper. He was a quiet man who didn't really know anger, only that panic for him now defaulted to violence unless he could get it onto paper fast enough. He had taken her last name and banished the N from Steven so he would feel less like his father but he couldn't hide from it as he had as a child. And then they had a son, nearly the light of his life, like his wife Victoria the embodiment of all that was good but with a flaw. Looking both like Victoria and, tragically like May as well as Steve's own mother, the people who he accused of bringing the hurt in his life. And now, though he loved the boy and wept over the prospect he had a new target. And when Octavian cried, he often couldn't get it to paper fast enough.

She was the only semblance of control. She was the opposite of how he felt when he had a panic attack, no longer breathless, no longer in pain, no longer overwhelmed and no longer feeling like he needed to vanish. But she wasn't enough.

Octavian Alexander was having a panic attack in 2007 and no one was doing anything about it. No one noticed it because he hid it from existence. Rarely did people visit the temple of Jupiter, often the source of his panic- both the temple and the lack of people who cared he was there. He waited out the storm of panic as best he could and when he regained as much control as he could he went to the Praetorium for an aspirin. The Praetor, whoever was in charge at that time, would give him two, at most, and he would go back to work. He had been here for 8 years, and it was always the same. Headaches and panic, aspirin and aspirations that fizzled when they reached the surface. His father had been 12 as well, when he'd had panic attacks as Octavian was having now. Both had been alone, no one taking notice, no one caring. For both, there was no saving grace.

That was his childhood. A series of realizations that left him overwhelmed, alone, and panicking. It was not a lack of care that saved him, as it had had almost saved his father, but rather the lack of care sent him further into the depths of despair. Because he wanted so desperately to be cared about, and he just wasn't.


End file.
